Thursday, April 26, 2007

Spellings Scheduled to Tesitfy May 10 in Latest Corruption

WASHINGTON, April 25 — New York’s attorney general on Wednesday accused the federal Education Department of being lax in regulating the student loan industry and said that criminal charges might result from his continuing investigation into ties between universities and lenders.

In testimony before the House education committee, the attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, said that as the housing secretary in the Clinton administration he was “not quick to criticize” a federal agency.

“However,” he said, “I believe in this case, the Department of Education has been asleep at the switch.”

Mr. Cuomo also announced that two more banks, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, had signed on to a code of conduct barring lenders from giving financial incentives to universities, or payments or trips to university officials, to win favor for the lender.

Representative George Miller, the California Democrat who is chairman of the committee, said that he had asked Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to testify and criticized the department’s “slowness to react to the situation.” Ms. Spellings is scheduled to appear May 10. . . .